New Evil Dead already courting controversy

David Konow, 22nd October 2016

We’ve repeated this before many times on TG, but it bears repeating again…we intensely dislike the endless parade of horror remakes.

Maybe some horror classics don’t hold up well today, maybe some have gotten dated, but there’s plenty of crappy horror films that could be remade into something good. Why take a good one and risk turning it into crap?

In the case of the new Evil Dead remake, which hits theaters on April 5, it’s already garnered decent reviews, along with the support of Bruce Campbell and Sam Raimi. But now the New York Times tells us the remake is being boycotted by some fans sight unseen.

This is no big news flash. There’s plenty of fans who boycott horror remakes no matter what, but you usually don’t hear about it much in the news, especially in the New York Times. Frankly, one of the biggest abominations in horror remakes, Rob Zombie’s Halloween, should have gotten a more vehement reaction from the fans, and it’s unfortunate they didn’t rise up in masse against one of the Citizen Kanes of the genre being desecrated, like they’re doing now with Evil Dead.

As a writer for the horror site Bleeding Skull told the Times, "I wouldn’t watch it at gunpoint," and as Robert Fure, the editor of Film School Rejects, explained, "Evil Dead started off with a small fan base. People had to find that movie on VHS, and you had to rent it or find a bootleg tape that was passed around. With a smaller movie people get protective." He also added he’s "aggressively and violently" avoiding the nu model Dead.

But as Bruce Campbell has been pleading, he still wants the fans to keep an open mind. "These are the original producers making this movie, not some fat slob producer looking for a cheap property to get their hands on," he said. "I am far more concerned with this being a good movie than the fans are."

For fans of the original Evil Dead, there have been reports that Sam Raimi may actually make a fourth official Dead film one of these days, and it would be cool to have the original crew make one more old school go around. Campbell told Entertainment Weekly that the question, "Bruce, when are you going to make another Evil Dead?," haunts him at every convention he goes to.

"But that’s the beauty of Evil Dead fans. They don’t want excuses – they want blood running down the screen and they want it now!"